Imagine I suspected that someone broke into a house by stealing a key from its owner. If you later showed that someone else broke into another house by smashing a window, would you think that this showed I was wrong about the first person stealing a key?
No?
Then why is this considered a passable argument?
When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up. When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race.
The subject, of course, is Jack Kelley vs. Jayson Blair, and Pitts’ point is precisely on target. Don’t the folks who loudly insisted that affirmative action was to blame for Jayson Blair’s transgressions owe us an explantion for their relative silence about the far worse journalistic fabrications of Jack Kelley? Has it given them any second thoughts at all?
I like Kevin Drum, but this shows a serious lack of attention to the dicussion about Jayson Blair. First of all, I’m not aware of anyone who suggests that affirmative action is to blame for Blair’s trangressions. Affirmative action didn’t cause Blair to lie. The suggestion is that affirmative action allowed Blair to more effectively escape the consequences of his lies for a longer period of time than would be expected at a newspaper with supposedly high standards for accuracy. The suggestion is that Blair was underqualified for the position he was given. The suggestion is that affirmative action sensibilities allowed Raines to turn a blind eye to Blair’s problems and made it more difficult for Blair’s peers to voice their opinions about him.
Let’s hear from his boss, Howell Raines:
“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter. I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities….Does that mean I personally favored Jayson? Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”
This suggests that it is at the very least non-ridiculous to think that race played a factor in Blair’s quick success.
This post does nothing to deny that racism exists in the US. This post does not suggest that black people are inferior. This post does not suggest Blair’s journalistic crimes were worse than Kelly’s. You could lie far more egregiously than Blair, and get away from it for longer, and so long as your method of evading notice did not involve affirmative action that would say precisely nothing about whether or not affirmative action played a large part in Blair getting away with lying as long as he did while getting promoted as quickly to as high a position as he did.
There are many different methods for evading detection of lies. Just because Kelly didn’t use affirmative action to further his says precisely nothing about the high probability that affirmative action helped Blair with his.
“Affirmative action didn’t cause Blair to lie. The suggestion is that affirmative action allowed Blair to more effectively escape the consequences of his lies for a longer period of time than would be expected at a newspaper with supposedly high standards for accuracy.”
What’s this nonsense you’re peddling? Since when does “affirmative action” force news editors to turn a blind eye towards the mishaps of their colored employees? Is there some statute or law stating that colored employees are to be given the benefit of the doubt N times as often as white employees?
Or are you trying to redefine “affirmative action” as “white man’s guilt” here?
“Colored employees”?
Race and double standards
This bout of point-missing has been going on for too long. Referencing the similar Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley cases of journalistic fraud, Leonard Pitts writes… When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up….
The suggestion is that affirmative action allowed Blair to more effectively escape the consequences of his lies for a longer period of time than would be expected at a newspaper with supposedly high standards for accuracy. The suggestion is that Blair was underqualified for the position he was given. The suggestion is that affirmative action sensibilities allowed Raines to turn a blind eye to Blair’s problems and made it more difficult for Blair’s peers to voice their opinions about him.
Try this:
Kelly used his identity as a white man and his connections in the white man network to gain a position he was unqualified for. White man sensibilities allowed Kelly’s editors to turn a blind eye to Kelly’s problems and made it more difficult for Blair’s peers to voice their opinions about him.
Or,
Kelly use his identity as a Christian and the desire for USA Today to represent Christian thought to gain a position he was unqualified for. Christian sensibilities allowed Kelly’s editors to turn a blind eye to Kelly’s problems and made it more difficult for Blair’s peers to voice their opinions about him.
Drum doesn’t lack attention. You are blind to the nature of the criticism the wingnut right was drumming (pun intended but not clever) up. Like them, you see a problem of priviledge through affirmative action but not priviledge through belonging to the majority race or religion.
IJWTS that I think Fabius makes a entirely valid point.
First of all, I’m not aware of anyone who suggests that affirmative action is to blame for Blair’s trangressions. Affirmative action didn’t cause Blair to lie. The suggestion is that affirmative action allowed Blair to more effectively escape the consequences of his lies for a longer period of time than would be expected at a newspaper with supposedly high standards for accuracy.
A distinction without a difference. Opponents of AA aren’t going to make the distinction; it just provides more fodder that AA is wrong in their minds.
Of course, it’s a fallacy to attack any policy initiative (such as AA) on grounds having nothing to do with the policy itself. If a policy is improperly implemented, managed, or enforced, such shortcomings cannot be blamed on the policy itself.
Sebastian, you seem like a stand-up, reasonable guy, which explains why you missed the racial tone of the outrage over Jayson Blair. It was there, and it was real. Fabius has it right.
“which explains why you missed the racial tone of the outrage over Jayson Blair.”
I’m not even sure what you mean. If by ‘racial tone’ you mean that it mentioned affirmative action which is intimately tied to race, you are of course right.
If you meant RACIST overtone, I don’t agree with you.
“Since when does “affirmative action” force news editors to turn a blind eye towards the mishaps of their colored employees?”
Amazing sentence by the way. If I had used your terminology I would be smacked upside the head. And I don’t know how long it has been going on but Raines, Blair’s actual boss, pretty much admits the charge that you find so impossible.
Fabius, the problem with your examples is that there isn’t in fact a program in place in newsrooms similar enough to affirmative action to make your analogies work. You are basically equating talking about affirmative action (which is what I was doing) with racism. You have the right to do that, I just don’t think it is particularly logical.
I’m not sure where I see racism or “affirmative action” in play. I think that if you look at the cases of Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly together, it proves that editors aren’t doing their jobs very well. I don’t see where race plays into either case.
Sebastian, you’re missing the point that, whatever the demerits or merits of affirmative action — which is a topic so far and away complicated I’m not going to say a word about it here and now — it is a “program,” and thus its flaws will be, by definition, programmatic flaws.
Whereas the the benefits a member of a majority get do not come from a program; they are, nonetheless, real. Would you deny that white folks have had an advantage over non-white folks in this country, historically, without any need for Jim Crow or “programs,” but simply from benefiting from being “one of our kind” (which thought is typically honestly not consciously racially conscious)?
You don’t think the only kind of racism (or other ism) is the conscious, intentional, kind, surely?
Regardless, if one is alleging someone benefiting from being “black,” it’s hardly inapposite for the notion that some “whites” benefit from being white to enter the conversation, is it?
Kelly used his identity as a white man and his connections in the white man network to gain a position he was unqualified for.
There’s a white man network? How do I tap into that?
Slarti – you have.
JKC – I agree with you. I don’t see how race plays into it, either. Neither did the writer of the San Jose Mercury. But Kaus, Drudge, Easterbrook, et al certainly did. It was how they they attacked the Times and Raines.
“How do I tap into that?”
By being in the “normal” invisible majority.
Ever notice how many people will identify someone by a usage such as “oh, he’s that tall black man over there,” whereas they would never say of the man next to him, “oh, he’s that tall white man over there,” unless the person in question was surrounded by “black” men?
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just the way majority/minority dualities play out when they’re (usually erroneously) considered to be relevant.
Fifty years ago, someone might be identified as “a woman lawyer.” No one was ever identified as “a man lawyer.” The majority is the norm, and that’s often invisible to the majority because it’s the norm.
Slarti – you have.
Wow. And I thought I was just sleepwalking.
Still, a little explanation is in order, I think.
By being in the “normal” invisible majority.
Why is my ethnic background relevant here? And why do you think you know what my ethnic background is?
“Why is my ethnic background relevant here? And why do you think you know what my ethnic background is?”
I did not refer to your ethnic background. I have no idea what said background is. I made some generalized observations. If you can point out any observations I made about you, that might clarify discussion.
Perhaps I would have been clearer if I had written “you would if…,” but brevity suggested that clarity was sufficient (brevity and I have these little chats all the time). That may have been an error on my part, in which case my apologies.
And why do you think you know what my ethnic background is?
All the Slartibartfast I’ve ever known were white. One, however, happened to be from another planet.
Check, Gary.
I’m just questioning the unsupported assertion that Kelley used his identity as a white man and his connections in the white man network to gain a position he was unqualified for. And I’m not under the misapprehension that you said that. I’m wondering what specific actions one has to take to enjoy the advantages of said network. And if there are in fact no such actions, then Fabius’ statement means precisely nothing.
One, however, happened to be from another planet.
Which makes me more of a minority than any of you. And don’t you forget it.
I never said that it was impossible that Kelly used some sort of ‘white man’ thingee to hid his lies, though I doubt it. So make that argument then. Go for it. Marshall evidence, try to convince. That would be great.
But I suspect you won’t find anything as strong as the Raines quote, because my suspicion is that race didn’t play a big part in the Kelly case, and that it did in the Blair case.
But I’m not precluding anything. If you honestly believe that Kelly’s race had something to do with him getting away with lying for as long as he did, please make that case. But until then, we have two lying journalists. Unless you believe that there is only one way to lie there isn’t really any reason to believe that the cases are deeply similar.
I’ll stick to my analogy: proving that someone broke into a house through a window doesn’t say anything about the possibility of breaking in using a stolen key.
“I’m just questioning the unsupported assertion that Kelley used his identity as a white man and his connections in the white man network to gain a position he was unqualified for.”
My reading of that was as a hypothetical, not as a given. Obviously anyone making such an assertion would need to support it, just as it is necessary to support the assertion that a major factor in Jayson Blair’s “success” was his “race.”
Myself, I’ve not looked closely into either case, and don’t feel sufficiently interested in the issue to plan to.
My one slight quibble with the grammatical implication the words I’ve yours I’ve just quoted here is that I suspect it would be vastly easier to, hypothetically, demonstrate that Kelley’s identity as a “white” man aided him, rather than he used it, if you see my distinction. The latter involves intent, the former does not. I very much doubt the latter would be the case.
You’re deliberately missing Fabius’ point, Mr. Holsclaw. Fabius was merely pointing out how foolish the race-based attacks on Blair and the NYTimes were and are by using a similarly flawed attack on Kelley and USAToday.
The point is clear: both instances were failures of editorial control and judgment. However, since Blair is black and the NYTimes perceived as liberal, conservatives opted to also attack AA.
Again, check. And it’s equally silly to suggest that Blair used race to stay employed longer, as opposed to being aided by it. Not that I’m advancing the latter as a theory, but it was in fact Raines himself that stated that to be the case.
But I suspect you won’t find anything as strong as the Raines quote, because my suspicion is that race didn’t play a big part in the Kelly case, and that it did in the Blair case.
USA Today Investigative Report on Kelley
A “virus of ‘fear'” infected some USA TODAY staffers who had suspicions about Kelley’s work. That fear, born in part of the perception that Kelley “was seen as an untouchable” and the “Golden Boy” for the newspaper’s top management, deterred them from forcefully raising concerns with editors and made the newspaper’s staff “enablers for the fraud Jack Kelley produced.”
The paper’s initial investigation of Kelley last year was fatally flawed “because the investigators set out to prove he had been guilty of nothing,” rather than conducting an impartial review with no preconceptions.
“You’re deliberately missing Fabius’ point, Mr. Holsclaw.”
Mind-reading. Five-yard penalty.
Heh.
Heh.
Gary said:
Ever notice how many people will identify someone by a usage such as “oh, he’s that tall black man over there,” whereas they would never say of the man next to him, “oh, he’s that tall white man over there,” unless the person in question was surrounded by “black” men?
I’m late to the party, I know, but I just want to say that one of the few things I am genuinely proud of myself for is never having done that. I clearly remember, as a child even, making a conscious effort never to point someone out to someone else by referring to the colour of their skin, even if it meant the process took longer. Some things are worth doing.
…and where I was at the time, pointing people out by the colour of their skin, if not ‘white’, was an obvious and easy solution (just in case anyone’s worried I was making distinctions…) – I just tried to find different solutions.
“Fabius was merely pointing out how foolish the race-based attacks on Blair and the NYTimes were and are by using a similarly flawed attack on Kelley and USAToday.
The point is clear: both instances were failures of editorial control and judgment. However, since Blair is black and the NYTimes perceived as liberal, conservatives opted to also attack AA.”
If that is what Fabius was doing, I can’t agree with the ‘since Blair is black….’ clause.
The correct clause for what conservatives are doing begins with “since Blair received preferred treatment under affirmative action concepts….”. It is true that a white Blair wouldn’t get affirmative action treatment. But the problem is not ‘since Blair is black’, the problem is that you have to be black to get affirmative action.
Jadegold’s quote is interesting because it showed that Kelly may have gotten preffered treatment through non-racial methods. That makes perfect sense, and is well in line with my idea that you can break into a house using various possible methods. All along I have suggested that Blair may have gotten prefered treatment based (at least partially) on his race and Kelly may have gotten prefered treatment on some other basis.
Once again, the fact that Kelly did bad things without using race neither tends to prove nor tends to disprove the idea that Blair’s race had something to do with how he was able to get away with the same type of actions.
One question for Slarti (and for that matter Sebastian): what do you make of Raines’ assertion that whatever slack he cut Blair, he didn’t do so as part of a conscious policy?
At the same time, Kevin was also making the point that _regardless_ of whether AA played a role in the Blair case, the seriousness of the Kelley fabrications and their implications (considering the readership of USA Today, etc) deserves far more attention than it has been getting from people who supposedly care about media bias and accuracy in journalism. It’s interesting, for example, that the whole issue of the World Journalism Institute doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention at all in the context of media bias, etc.
I’m sorry you’ve not responded to my direct questions to you, Sebastian, or other comments; they weren’t rhetorical.
Naturally, it’s up to you to choose what you wish to reply to and engage upon, of course.
Sorry I sometimes get distracted while answering one post and never get to the others.
“Would you deny that white folks have had an advantage over non-white folks in this country, historically, without any need for Jim Crow or “programs,” but simply from benefiting from being “one of our kind” (which thought is typically honestly not consciously racially conscious)?”
Wouldn’t deny that, especially historically.
“You don’t think the only kind of racism (or other ism) is the conscious, intentional, kind, surely?”
Surely racism can be both conscious or subconscious. Which is not to say that all people who are not consciously racist are therefore in fact subconsciously racist.
“Regardless, if one is alleging someone benefiting from being “black,” it’s hardly inapposite for the notion that some “whites” benefit from being white to enter the conversation, is it?”
Here is where you are eliding my argument into such little pieces as to make each thought an orphan.
I have offered some evidence (though apparently completely non-convincing to some) that Blair’s journalistic misdeeds were papered over because of a specific program which targeted him by race.
If you desire you can try to extend a racial argument to Kelly. However you will have to be very general and amorphous because Kelly did not have his misdeeds covered over because of his race. They apparently were covered over by different things.
As I said above, I’m not placing the idea of Kelly’s race as out of play if you want to bother to marshall specific evidence that it was involved, like others have marshalled specific evidence in the case of Blair. I just object to some sort of universalizing idea that past racial misdeeds put a discussion of possible harm in affirmative action programs off the table.
You may not be convinced by the evidence offered that racial preferences contributed greatly in the Blair case, but surely you can see that there is some evidence pointing in that direction–unlike Kelly’s case so far as I know it.
And questioning the racial implications of Kelly’s case isn’t what Kevin Drum is doing anyway. He seems to be supporting the somewhat surprising contention that because race was not involved in the Kelly case, it must not have been involved in the Blair case. That isn’t logic as I know it.
No, he’s implying that the difference in reactions between the Kelley case and the Blair case indicate that everybody who jumped all over the NYT, Howell Raines, etc, doesn’t actually care about journalistic accuracy and objectivity, but only about bashing AA, etc.
Which institution makes a bigger deal about its journalistic integrity/objectivity? If you want to suggest that there was a bit of schadenfreude in conservative reactions to the NYT revelations I won’t argue with you. But that at least has very little to do with race.
Which institution makes a bigger deal about its journalistic integrity/objectivity? If you want to suggest that there was a bit of schadenfreude in conservative reactions to the NYT revelations I won’t argue with you. But that at least has very little to do with race.
Occupation & Opposition II
Reply from Kola Odetola to an earlier post.
Race and double standards
This bout of point-missing has been going on for too long. Referencing the similar Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley cases of journalistic fraud, Leonard Pitts writes… When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up….